'Miles Davis: The Complete Columbia Album Collection' due Nov. 24

The weighty CD boxed set spans four decades of the jazz trumpeter's career, but don't look for it in stores

November 22, 2009|By Chris Barton, TRIBUNE NEWSPAPERS

It's a curious irony that at a time when entire music collections can be shrunk down to the size of a couple of sticks of gum, certain music packages keep getting larger.

Hot on the heels of the much-celebrated remastered Beatles sets, Sony Legacy is releasing "Miles Davis: The Complete Columbia Album Collection," a beautiful but somewhat daunting stockpile of 52 albums on more than 70 CDs spanning four decades in the jazz trumpeter's storied and fiercely unpredictable career.

With each album bound in mini-LP sleeves and packed into a dense brick of music slightly smaller than a shoe box, this set is the mother lode for Davis completists.

This marks the first occasion that crisply remastered editions of titles such as the mind-bending double-album live recordings "Agharta" and "Pangaea" have been available in the U.S. Assembled in conjunction with a three-month exhibition at the Musee de la Musique in Paris called "We Want Miles," the set's monolithic size not only serves as summation of Davis' recorded output, it's also a somewhat paradoxical reflection of a shrinking sales environment that Steve Berkowitz, vice president of A&R for Legacy Recordings, said is conducive to a "more is more" approach.

This set includes extras such as numerous new and previously issued bonus tracks, the first full release of a recording of Davis' fiery 1970 performance from the Isle of Wight (issued years ago on a compilation as the abbreviated medley "Call It Anythin'") and the DVD debut of two freewheeling European concerts by Davis' stellar 1967 band featuring Wayne Shorter, Tony Williams, Ron Carter and Herbie Hancock. The set affords listeners a welcome opportunity to explore intriguing but less-celebrated albums such as "Miles in Tokyo."

But it also includes some of the trumpeter's uneven later works. For instance, it's tough to imagine the sort of devout fan who would invest the money this set demands treating Davis' pedestrian cover of Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time" from 1985's "You're Under Arrest" as much more than a novelty.

Much like the Beatles sets, there are a few catches. Apart from the Paris exhibition, the collection is available exclusively through Amazon starting Tuesday (listed for $364.98 but discounted to $328.48) and only in its physical form -- no downloads.